General

I purchased the popcorn-themed fabric for this year’s auction quilt benefitting Primary Children’s Hospital in April but dealing with the stress fracture in my foot since then has made it tough to do the cutting. Now that I’m out of the wheelchair, I felt like I could stand & cut. So this week I did all the cutting one day & did the sewing the rest of the week.

I finished “It’s Popcorn Time” Friday afternoon & am planning to drop it off for quilting today. The rush came about because now I’m scheduled for thumb surgery for my arthritis on 23 September, so I won’t be sewing for a while. I figured I’d better get my priority quilt done first. The pattern comes from John Q. Adams’ book, Beyond Neutral, a book I’ve had forever & now I’ve finally made one of the patterns!

Popcorn is yellow, so I’m still in the feel of August’s color. LOL Now it’s back to the RSC WIP I was trying to complete last week & maybe some purple blocks??

I got to dig into my red scraps & made ten red houses for the Quilter’s Cove QAL. I also discovered that I need to go shopping for some bright red FQ’s! I have a bin full of rust & maroon chunks inherited from an older quilter who had to give up her stash. I promised to use it up & I’m slowly doing that, but I’m low on bright reds. Apparently I decimated them last year! I have what I need to finish up March, but next year…… 🙂

My red-centric WIP for the month is done & ready for the quilter. This was a previous quilt group project & used up lots of red strips. My partners made theirs with 5 matching reds, but I had so many random red strips leftover from rolls that I figured scrappy was the way to go. I used them all & only cut a little yardage, then made the 3 stars from the same fabrics for consistency.

It turns out that green-centric WIPs are thin on the ground in my studio. So I pulled out an old group quilt project. I hated every minute of these birds & when my partners went ahead & finished on their own, I left it in the box. I don’t know how long ago we did this but it was long before COVID, so…..years.

One of my quilting partners gave me a gift for Christmas of free quilting, so I told her I would get the birds done & have her quilt it. She LOVES the birds, so that will be fun for her. These are the last two birds I needed to do before sashing & border.

I’ve since done a couple other quilts by The Pattern Basket & understand her method of pattern writing, plus I have more experience & all the things that frustrated me back then seemed no big deal now. So these went together quickly. I also got the first two rows sashed this week, but with two funerals this week, one of which included an overnight trip, I didn’t have much sewing time. But I’m thinking that even with the short month, I should stay on track with green blocks & maybe start the houses??

Rocky Road to Grayson is a blue WIP January finish! First goal accomplished. I started in January 2022, so it’s been around the studio for an age. It took much longer than I anticipated to finish, so I did not get any blue houses made for the Quilter’s Cove QAL.

I got seven full & one half block made for Starlets by Modernly Morgan & 14 string blocks for Stardust. The previously posted Nine-Patch & Snowball blocks round out my goals for the month. So I feel pretty dang good about things, even without the houses.

I got blue binding made & attached to County Fair from last year’s RSC & evening binding has begun.

Since it’s blue this month, I thought I’d report on my orange peels. I’m appliqueing these by hand each Monday morning in my handwork group. I got them all out this month to check on progress. I’m about 2/3 of the way through, so I should finish these up this year!

These charity baby quilts got bound this week & are ready to be donated. The left was made from orphan pieces leftover from the quilt I just finished, & the right was made from a friend’s unwanted charm pack.

I like to do a new challenge every so often, so here’s my fun change-up for 2026, which is to match up the books that you’ve read with the pictures on the bingo card.